


But If You Try Sometimes

by ChibiSquirt



Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawaii Five-0 (2010), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America has a Secret Identity, Crossover, Fandom Trumps Hate 2019, Gen, I cannot beLIEVE this is from FTH 2019 I thought I'd had this prompt for two years at LEAST, Including Canon-Typical Police Brutality, Lemme tell you it is WEIRD writing H50 squad in 2020 yikes, Pre-Slash, The Divergence is they woke Steve up and then actually allowed the poor boy to retire
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:20:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24813718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt
Summary: “We know a guy.”Kono pauses, her hands stilling on the rifle parts she’s re-packing into the carrying case. “We do?” She frowns, obviously trying to identify the person Chin is talking about. “We’re using Kamekona for the sting, brah, we can’t use him for babysitting too.”“Oh my god.” Danny covers his eyes at the admittedly implausible vision of Grace cheerfully eating shrimp while gunmen shoot up the air around her.“No.No, absolutely not, no way, Irefuse—”“A different guy,” Chin answers calmly.Comprehension dawns like sunrise across Kono's beautiful face, followed by incredulity. “Wait...Jamie?You mean Jamie, right? Forbabysitting?”She pauses again, thinking it over. “...Actually, now that you mention it, that’s a pretty good idea.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, McDanno (pre-slash)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 53
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2019





	But If You Try Sometimes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TetrodotoxinB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/gifts), [icoulddothisallday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icoulddothisallday/gifts).



> Hi, this is a FTH fill from last year!
> 
> Hawaii Five-0 folks: Welcome! To... whatever this is! This fic is fundamentally a Five-0 cookie with chocolate MCU chips, and it's Danny's POV so you shouldn't need to know too much about Captain America in order to follow it. (I've actually written for your fandom once before, a fic with Max Bergman topping the shit out of McGarrett... _no, wait, come back!!!)_
> 
> Shipping on this is: canon ships, including the unformed queerplatonic ~whatever~ that McDanno have going on. (They share parenting responsibilities and go on retreats together, okay, they have *something* going on! Canon trying to pretend in spite of this that they're not gay only makes my aro ass stronger.) Speaking of canon: timeline? What timeline? I have watched most of the series--up to I think season six? seven? something like that--but then I gave up, and I only watched it once so there's definitely a lot of handwaving here. 
> 
> Also, I mention this in the tags but I'll say it here too: this is a _hella_ violent canon. I'm toning it down, but it's still uncomfortable enough for me to re-work the outline in an effort to avoid some of it. Given the current events going on I have to say that I believe--I HOPE--that H50 the series is going to be very dated by the level of police brutality it depicts. I've tried to depict *less* violence here, but... Take care of yourselves. I would not want anyone to damage their mental state by reading my fic.
> 
> Marvel Folks: It's been a fairly long while since I felt like writing anything in the Marvel verse. Since I know some people will ask: there are two fics other than this one that I'm planning on finishing: Told You Dirty Jokes and another, the sequel to the Harry Potter/Bucky Barnes soulmate AU. After that, I think I'll have pretty much moved on. But I promised this one, and also, the nature of the fic means there's a bit of distance from What Marvel Did To Us All. That's helpful. I tagged it canon divergent, and it is, but it's also... hmm, let's say, noncompliant? I do what I want. 
> 
> A very special thank-you to [Imafriendlydalek,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imafriendlydalek/pseuds/imafriendlydalek) who stealth-beta'ed this for me, and has given tentative approval over the hieroglyphics which comprise the rest of my "outline." THANK YOU!!!

“We know a guy.”

Kono pauses, her hands stilling on the rifle parts she’s re-packing into the carrying case. “We do?” She frowns, obviously trying to identify the person Chin is talking about. “We’re using Kamekona for the sting, brah, we can’t use him for babysitting too.”

“Oh my god.” Danny covers his eyes at the admittedly implausible vision of Grace cheerfully eating shrimp while gunmen shoot up the air around her. _“No._ No, absolutely not, no way, I _refuse—”_

“A different guy,” Chin answers calmly. He’s packing wires and mics into a kit, having just checked them the same way Kono did her guns. Unlike Kono, his hands never even slow as he speaks. Years of experience showing, right there.

Kono frowns at him, obviously confused. “A different guy?” 

Chin nods, picking up another mic.

“And _I_ know him???”

Chin nods again, then snorts. “You’re the one who introduced me—on a blind date, no less—so I would hope so.”

Comprehension dawns like sunrise across her beautiful face, followed by incredulity. “Wait... _Jamie?_ You mean Jamie, right? For _babysitting?”_ She pauses again, thinking it over. “...Actually, now that you mention it, that’s a pretty good idea.”

“Guys.”

Who the hell is Jamie? Danny hasn’t met a Jamie.

...Wait, did Chin Ho Kelly just say _blind date?_

Chin lays out the arguments for him, one by one: “He has a huge house, so there’d be plenty of space, including room outside to run around if she wants—”

“She is pretty active,” Kono agrees. 

“—and art supplies inside, to keep her occupied if not. And plenty of books, too.”

“No television, though.”

“No, he has one, he just never uses it,” Chin says, contradicting her. Kono opens her mouth, but before she can say anything he adds, “It’s upstairs.”

Her eyebrows _shoot_ up, and Danny finds his own echoing them.

Chin smiles at them both, amused at the obvious conclusion they’ve drawn. “Not there,” he explains, “or—if there _is_ one in his bedroom, I wouldn’t know. He has one in his studio, though; he uses it to display references. Birds, mostly.”

“...He is _such a nerd,”_ Kono says, her voice full of despair.

“He is,” Chin agrees, “but...” He turns back to face Danny, and his voice shifts into a reassuring smoothness that Danny, for one, does not find all that reassuring. “...He’s a _competent_ nerd. Ex-military with a gun or two in his safe, and damned good at hand-to-hand, too. Gives Kono a run for her money.” Kono nods grudgingly, but quickly enough that Danny knows this is the truth. “I’m sure he’d be happy to babysit for a few hours while we take care of this.”

Danny looks from one to the other, but the truth is, he’s stuck. Kamekona is his usual babysitter, and Kamekona’s coming with them. Rachel and Stan are out of town, Catherine’s out on the boat this month (“Ship,” Steve had corrected, wincing), and literally _no one_ was going to trust _Doris_ with another child. This guy—whoever he is—is pretty much Danny’s last chance of going with them on this sting instead of covering comms from HQ. “...Have we at _least_ run a thorough background check?”

Kono looks offended. “Brah, I set him up on a date with _Chin,”_ she says, “of course I ran a background check!” 

“...Right,” Danny agrees, “the normal stuff. Should have figured.”

* * *

“He’s an artist,” Chin says forty minutes later. Their babysitter-in-potentia has just been buzzed into the building. “Ex-military, and he must have seen some pretty nasty stuff, because when he retired, the government bought land and paid to build him a place here. He lives off his backpay—apparently, it’s a lot of backpay—but he’s a simple guy; he’s not spending it on cars and blow. I think his biggest expense is some high-end paints. But his art sells pretty well; he’s good, in an art deco inspired way. If he’d inherited a place and was living off just the art, you’d see pretty much the same lifestyle.”

“So, not crazy.” Danny nods, head bobbing just a shade too much. He makes himself stop, and finds himself tapping his fingers on the desk, instead. “That’s a good sign.”

“I mean, he is a _little_ crazy. He goes to all the protests.” Chin smiled fondly. “And that was before Kono introduced him to Ben, who he gets along with a liiittle too well. And given the way SHIELD and the Army are tripping over themselves to keep him happy, there’s probably some PTSD in there—and probably for good reason. But, no: other than that, he’s pretty down to earth.

“Here we go.” Chin slips off the desk he’s been sitting on. Grace, who has been drawing at Danny’s desk with the intense focus of someone listening as hard as she can, looks up. “Hey, you made it!” 

Danny’s first impression is, _I didn’t know Chin came in Blond._

It’s almost eerie, the way the two men mirror each other: sure, they’re two different races, but both are tall—New Guy has maybe a couple inches on Chin, maybe three, but both men are up around six feet—and both are very... _triangular_ in the torso. They both have the smooth movements of those trained in the martial arts, and the forthright gaze found in cops and the righteous. 

Since Danny knows the new guy _isn’t_ a cop, that last one seems like a pretty good sign.

“Danny Williams, Grace... Meet James Quinn. Jamie lives up by Makaleha, right up against a beach.”

Grace perks up at the mention of a beach, tilting her head at the stranger in hopeful curiosity, and Danny sighs inside. He’s an old hand at this fatherhood thing by now, and he knows when he’s doomed. “Thank you very much,” he says, holding out his hand to James Quinn in an attempt to concede gracefully. “This is so great of you, really, I can’t tell you—”

“No problem.” Jamie smiles, and it’s a pretty great smile: open as a baseball diamond, but smart with it, clever good humor lurking in the corners of his lips and twitching his eyebrows like there’s some joke they’re sharing. The charisma of it hits like a shotgun blast against a bullet-proof vest: no harm done, but Danny is still left winded. He finds himself rubbing his sternum like it can dissipate the nonexistent impact. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,” Jamie continues, “I only have my bike—”

Danny tries not to look like he’s having a heart attack and fear-vomiting at the same time.

“—which obviously I can’t put Grace on—”

Oh, hey, look, Jamie Quinn gets to live another day!

“—and the van, which is all full of paintings, and it can’t really go too fast. I’m always worried it’ll break down if I take it over sixty.”

...Danny tries, he tries really, _really_ hard, to not say anything. He does not succeed, but he does try. “This... would be the van you’re planning to put my daughter in?”

Jamie Quinn grins again, a quick flash of a thing this time, there and then gone before you can even realize it was there, like the rain they get in this fucking hellhole of an island. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I won’t take it out on the highway with her.”

That is not the most reassuring thing Danny has ever heard in his life, not even in that accent which is just familiar enough to make Danny homesick—but it’s something at least, and it beats the hell out of how Fuckhead McGarrett handled Danny’s parental concerns, so it’s a point in Jamie Quinn’s favor. 

And speak of the devil, here McGarrett comes now, poking his head around the corner and scanning the room. Danny rolls his eyes. “Steve,” he says in exasperation, then stops when Jamie Quinn jumps, the first non-smooth action Danny has seen him take. “What?”

“Nothing,” Quinn says hastily, but he’s staring at Danny like Danny has just sprouted antennas or something. Antennae? Little bug... ear... _things,_ whatever. 

Danny gives it half a second, but when Quinn doesn't say anything else he shrugs and turns back to McGarrett. “Gimme half a minute here, Steve. I’m passing over custody of my daughter to a stranger and regretting every single turn in my life that has led me to this moment.” 

Quinn snorts, letting the implied insult roll off his shoulders with a little shake that threatens to break right through his too-tight excuse for a t-shirt. He unlocks his phone and passes it over, which is either naive or very brave, depending on whether he’s figured out how much Chin and Kono can do with an unlocked phone. “Here, program your number in. That way if anything happens—not that it will—I can call you.”

Danny does—he enters his name twice, once under “Danny Williams” and once under “Grace’s Dad”—then turns to Grace. “You’ll be good?”

“Yes, Danno.”

“You’ll stick close?”

“Yes, Danno!” 

“If he turns out to be a serial killer, you know I’m okay with you stabbing him, right?”

“Oh my god, you are so _embarrassing!”_ She flips her hair and flounces over to Jamie Quinn. “Do you have snacks? Do you think we can get shave ice?” 

Danny remembers uneasily that she’s already twelve. Teenagerdom is coming in way too fast for a smooth landing. Although, on the other hand, shave ice does sound pretty damn good right about now, so point for peri-adolescent appetites, he guesses... “You know Kamekona will kill you if you go to anyone else!” he shouts after them, but all he gets is a languid flip of Grace’s hand behind her as she follows Quinn down the hall.

“...Ouch,” Steve says, voice like a verdict as he watches their retreating backs. “So, uh... the sting? The thing we all do for a living? We still doing that?” 

Danny and Chin make mutual, exasperated eye contact, then follow as Steve leads them toward the surveillance van.

* * *

Danny calls Grace as soon as the op is done.

“Are you fucking _calling your kid_ while we’re getting _shot at?!”_

...Okay, maybe a little _sooner_ than the op is done.

“You okay? How was the new sitter?” Danny ignores Steve’s indignant shout and hits the mute button with his left hand, rises, shooting with his right. He ducks around the shipping crates he’s using for shelter, spots the exit, takes three quick shots and sprints, hitting the unmute again as soon as he’s outside. 

“He’s cool,” Grace is saying into the phone. “Chin Ho said he’s a painter, so I kinda asked him for help with my art project?”

“Oh, yeah? What’s the art project? I notice you didn’t ask me for help.” Danny keeps his tone flippant as he ducks down behind a handy SUV. If the thing is tough enough to project the fragile masculinity of Dopeface in there, it’ll hold up through any shots that might get fired.

“Danno, please.” Grace’s voice has that baffling, intoxicating mix of disdain and adoration that she keeps in reserve especially for Danny. It never fails to reduce him to a pile of mush: inconvenient during a firefight, but cute as hell. “You have the soul of a cop,” she’s telling him, “you’re just not good at art.”

“I am wounded,” Danny tells her, ducking to the right to keep it from being literally true. “I am _so_ wounded, I would do the _best_ art.”

Grace just giggles. Danny melts again.

“Anyway,” she says, “I had to do research, so we’re still in the city. We just went to the library.”

“That’s great, sweetie!” Traffic’s going to be a nightmare, and Danny still has to finish the op and do debrief—“Do you want to finish your project, and then I pick you up? Take you out to dinner?”

“I mean, the first part? Sure. Should I call you when we’re done here?”

“Sounds perfect, princess.” Danny mutes the phone again to shoot the goon who comes racing around the side of his vehicular shelter, two quick taps to the center mass, then reopens the line. “I have to go here, but call me when you’re done. Danno loves you!”

“Love you, Danno!” 

“Dude.” Bleeding-out-on-concrete goon is staring at him. “Were you talking to your _daughter?_ During a _firefight?!”_

Why is everybody so critical today? Does he have a sign on his back, is it something in the water? It’s probably something in the water. “Okay, first of all, check-ins when she’s with a new sitter are important—” 

Danny counts shots in his head, ejects the mostly-empty clip, and slides a new one in to be prepared. He’s lecturing to a drug-running punk, and he knows it, and he does not care, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to lower his guard. 

“—and second of all, _you_ are not a firefight. You are—at best!—an afterthought. Your boss—who, by the way, needs to know when he is beaten— _he_ was a firefight, but he was on the fucking ground with my partner’s foot _literally on his back_ when I called her. The firefight part should have been done, only _you people_ are too fucking stupid!”

When Danny has more time, he is going to be _so_ pissed about Rafa Miranda managing to throw Steve from that position. On the other hand, even with as much shit as Danny plans to give Steve—all of it; all of the shit—he knows that Chin and Kono are going to give even more. After-fight team dinner tonight is basically going to be such a Steve roast. Danny’s half tempted to pick up some mint jelly on the way there. 

Except, no, he’s taking Grace out now. He’ll have to miss it. 

Damn. Well, there’s always tomorrow morning...

By the time they finish cleanup and are on the way back to the office, though, Grace is already done with her project. “That’s great, sweetie! You can show me when I get there! Uh...” The car is stopped on the highway, long lines of cars around them, each car wearing on Danny’s nerves like dozens of imps tormenting him in coconut-scented hell. “Which branch are you at?”

There’s a half-second pause, and then Grace sighs. “Do you want us to meet you back at your work?” she asks, too perceptive by half. 

Damn, he loves this kid. 

“That’d be great,” he says heartfelt into the phone, and by the time they all stagger into the Iolani Palace, Grace and Jamie Quinn are sitting around the briefing table, playing cards.

“Are you teaching my daughter five-card stud?” Danny demands without even saying hello.

Jamie Quinn raises his eyebrows as Grace shrieks in delight and jumps up to hug him, throwing down her cards. “You kidding? I think she’s teaching me!” 

Gracie smirks against his neck where her face is turned in for the hug, and Danny replays her greeting in his mind. Shrieking and throwing down her cards... “Bad hand, huh?” he asks quietly.

“Pair of twos,” she whispers back in disgust. “I missed you, Danno.”

He really, really loves his baby girl, even if she is too clever by half.

Danny shifts Grace to his left arm—she clings like a monkey—and holds out his hand to Quinn. “Thanks,” he says, and means it. 

“My pleasure,” Quinn says, shaking, and to all appearances, he means it too. “She’s a great girl—don’t go gettin’ ideas there, kid, I’m comparing you to some real losers—” Grace laughs and drops to her feet again, confident and happy. “—and it was good to get out of the house. Not quite the ‘interaction with people my own age’ that _someone_ keeps telling me I need, but a good start.” Quinn raises his eyebrows at someone over Danny’s shoulder, and Danny half-turns to see Kono leaning against the doorway with her tall-waves-and-tight-groupings grin on her face. 

“You weren’t even the one who suggested this,” Danny tells her, “stop it.”

“Hey, Chin’s still unloading the van, though. Somebody’s gotta take credit.” 

Quinn ducks his head, but he’s pretty tall and Danny can still see the grin tugging at his lips. Quinn raises his head once he’s got it under control and looks at Kono. “You coming up tomorrow for the good waves?”

“Nah,” she says reluctantly. “Got a family thing.” 

She shrugs her slim, square shoulders and stands up straight, stepping forward to join them. She doesn’t hug Jamie Quinn, though, and Danny notices, wondering why. Kono’s not a hugger, but she’s not _not_ a hugger, either; there’s some strange calculation she makes, and Danny still hasn’t figured out the equation yet. Kamekona yes, Chin Ho rarely, Steve no; Danny sometimes, but not others. Not hugging Jamie Quinn is interesting, but Danny’s got no clue what it means.

“...Might come up Tuesday, though.” 

The team gets staggered half-days off if they have to work weekends, and it’s a Saturday afternoon right now—or rather, early evening by this point. Danny usually likes to take his half-day on Wednesday, personally, because by Wednesdays he’s usually ready to pick fights over every little thing and it’s nice to have the mid-week break. Chin usually takes Monday mornings, and Steve doesn’t take any days off because he’s a neurotic workaholic who doesn’t understand the ancient and beautiful art of letting go. (He’s also a neurotic workaholic who doesn’t appreciate being told as much. Danny tells him, anyway. It’s for his own good.)

Kono switches her half-days out: sometimes saving it for Fridays, sometimes taking it on Tuesday if they’re not otherwise busy. Apparently, this time it’s Tuesday.

Jamie Quinn nods, accepting Kono’s self-invitation. “You’re more than welcome,” he says. The words would be sleazy coming from about ninety-seven percent of the male population, especially since he’s saying them about Kono in her swimsuit, but somehow, coming from Jamie Quinn, they seem nothing but sincere. The man’s face is like the personal equivalent of those vanilla-and-cinnamon candles the realtors burn to make you like houses; even Danny’s natural, New Jersey-bred suspicion is lulled by it. He turns to Danny, saying, “You too, if you surf.” The answer to that is obvious to all of them—although Kono did not need to wince, that part was rude—but he quickly amends it to add, “Or if you need a sitter again.”

And that... Danny might. Especially since Quinn did alright, apparently. He might just need a sitter again... 

“Right,” Danny says. He waves a hand, then sticks it in his pocket and nods. “I might, yeah. Right.” 

From off to the side, Grace beams at him with an expression almost of pride—like she’s the parent, and he’s the little kid who may’ve just made a friend.

* * *

“So what’s this I hear about a blind date?” 

The team is crowded around the table, enjoying a fine lunch provided by Chin, probably as an apology because that rat bastard always takes Monday mornings for his half-day and the rest of them always forget that means he doesn’t end up with the paperwork. 

At least today’s lunch isn’t from Kamekona’s shrimp truck. Not that the shrimp isn’t good, but it does get old, in a strictly metaphorical way. 

Chin stiffens at Steve’s question, his carefully-neutral expression not disguising his sudden tension. 

Danny kicks him in the shin. “Hey, Chin; come on. You think we care that you’re gay? I mean...” He sweeps a look around the group, getting consensus. Danny in particular is in no place to throw stones on this one, but it’s nice to know the whole team is there with him. “...we might be _surprised,_ but...”

Everybody’s nodding with him, encouraging. 

Chin relaxes again. “Well, I’m not,” he says. “Gay. I’m... pansexual, if we’re putting labels on it—which, I usually don’t. But mostly... It’s my family. They don’t know.”

They all nod, accepting this. Steve asks, “But Kono knew?”

“Kono walked in on him and his boyfriend when she was twelve,” the woman in question says dryly. “I was scarred for life.”

“And I was _terrified,”_ Chin Ho says in a tone of agreement. “But she never told my parents, and you guys... Well, it’s Five-Oh. You’re family.”

At that, they all clink their glasses together, and Danny leans back in his chair, remembering why this godforsaken hellhole-island is sometimes, occasionally, worth it. “I have to admit, that does explain the part where you were married before...”

“Hey, he could be again—it’s legal now.” Steve raises his glass in another toast when he says that, although Danny rather suspects that this toast is more for Steve’s own sake than for Chin’s. 

“I could be again, anyway,” Chin says patiently, “because I’m pansexual, not gay. I mean, I know it has a whole three extra syllables, but...” They wave off the distinction, but nod at him, and he takes it with a look like it's good as he’s going to get. “But—yeah, Kono wanted me to get out more, so... She set me up on a blind date.”

“With _that_ guy?” Danny snorts. “Wow. What’d you think when you walked in and saw _him?”_

“Pass—no answer.” Chin relaxes into his chair, scooping up vegetables and rice onto a plastic spork. “Anyway, he’s a good guy; we didn’t click romantically—he has History, an ex he’s not over yet—but we hit it off as friends, and we started hanging out. We have a lot of interests in common.”

“Bikes, art, and asskicking,” Kono says, translating that bit for them. “Plus, he’s just a really great guy.”

Danny leans back in his chair, crossing one leg over the opposite knee. “Well, if I need a sitter again, I’ll know who to call.”

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: decided the last section belongs at the start of the new chapter and moved it, so if you're looking at this for a second time (???) and going, "Something's missing!" you are correct :)


End file.
